Butterfly Mind: Revolution, Recovery, and One Reporter's Road to Understanding China

by Patrick Brown

Brown, Patrick

Genres: Biography

254 pages, Hardcover

First published August 5, 2008

Reviews

[Manon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had been on my TBR piles for many years. Butterfly mind delivers what it promises: Patrick Brown’s personal story, including his struggle with alcoholism, seamlessly blended in with his observations and reflections on major world events he covered as a reporter.

Brown is a great storyteller. He explains crises and their aftermath simply and clearly, bringing to the forefront activists, political actors and locals in a colourful but non judgemental way.

Reading this book in 2025 means many of Brown’s anecdotes about his life in China are dated. Despite this, the stories helped me learn a bit better this massive country and its people.

[Laurent De Serres Berard · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good book and pleasant writing, but I would recommend to read it as a travel memoirs than anything else. I've read it more to seek insight on history but I didn't feel like it address that part very well.

The author structured the book by having each chapter hinting first at the progression of its relation with alcoholism, at the time of experiencing a "revolution" in a country. He then discuss those historical event from his perspective, and end the chapter by linking it to the China experience, where he lived later on in his life, offering a bit more retrospective. The description of his relationship with alcoholism is succinct but efficient in conveying how the author lived it, the pervasive shape it took. That was a part of the book I found very touching and interesting.

My main issues with it is that once it was finished, I was not sure what was the key takeaways, what I lessons to draw from it. There is thesis or idea defended here, or alternate interpretation of events, nothing much like this. It tries to link or dissociate patterns, without a main theory to justify those associations. It is better to read it as a series of anecdotes then an history books or otherwise. The book is part biography, part about personal struggle with alcoholism, part about revolutionary events and part about what makes China what it is today. All of this, in a very short book, hence why it is better read as travel memoir.

[Lolly · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this biographical account seemed good and I expected to like it far more than I did. Like the title, the book seemed to flit around and never really alight.